[payeng]

Don't know which one is a bigger automotive 'faux pas' from the house of Mahindra

• Buying out Kinetic's 2 Wheeler business only to pile up loses year on year

• Burning cash by fielding a Moto3 Team (for what?)

• Or Mahindra's Obsession with Names ending with "O"

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Volkswagen pulling off its very competent Polo Variant - 1.6 (P) -MT in its first year of launch, citing cost reasons. But existing owners love its exclusivity and driving dynamics ( except for the hard clutch and a bit of acc. delay)

Attachment 1804567

Couldn’t be helped since the car never took off. If sales aren’t there, it’s better to pull the plug.

Agree with you that the car was very competent.

[dhanushmenon]

Originally Posted by ChiragM

Tata Motor's Annual Report uses Mahindra Maxximo images!!

Seriously the blunder of blunders! Someone ought to have been fired over this. The 2010-11 Tata Motors annual report had a sketch of the Mahindra Maxximo on each & every page . How did this even get approved?
Attachment 1800710

If Tata blessed themselves with the sketch of Mahindra Maximo, Mahindra did themselves a favour by advertising Maruti in their Club Mahindra ad.

[Samba]

How can i forget the blunder Hero did by trying to upgrade the Karizma! They could have bumped the power to 19ps in their pre face-lift version itself, rather than giving the new Karizma such a pathetic look!

Old


to new



Image source - Google.

[kskthere]

If counted as blunder then when Honda released its new Jazz in 2015, many got bemused by some feature differences between VX and V variants. While the top end variant VX had dangling USB/Aux/iPod cables in glove box and reverse camera with single viewing mode, the lower variant V had aesthetically placed USB/Aux/iPod slots and three viewing modes for reverse camera

[Porcupine]

Originally Posted by dhanushmenon

Mahindra did themselves a favour by advertising Maruti in their Club Mahindra ad.

Wow, that one deserves a firing! I'm not sure what's worse, Club Mahindra using Gypsy's over their own cars or going one step further to advertise it.

[dhanushmenon]

Originally Posted by Porcupine

Wow, that one deserves a firing! I'm not sure what's worse, Club Mahindra using Gypsy's over their own cars or going one step further to advertise it.

I think that was just a random picture from a safari at a place nearby one of the properties. So, I am not sure whether it was Mahindra using a Gypsy within their resort. However, advertising a different brand's vehicle in their ad is criminal in itself.

The vehicles the safari uses is not in their control; but whether to include that snap or not definitely is.

[mohansrides]

I know that this is predominantly a car thread. But, for those of us here who are keen observers of the two wheeler scene, it is hard to forget the horrid cluster that was the launch of the Royal Enfield Himalayan.

I am not an RE fanboy. And even I was pissed at how shabbily they treated the launch of their first all new motorcycle.

Most of us who aren't rabid RE fans think that their motorcycles are outdated pieces of metal that the company foists on brainwashed individuals through the help of their hyper-effective marketing department. Indeed, RE's strategy is a great lesson on how to market and sell an expansive line of motorcycles wherein the same engine (arguably) is shoved into N different models that don't even look all that different from each other.

With that being said, we are motorcycle enthusiasts all the same. So, this new product from RE was highly anticipated and closely watched by the community at large. Personally, I was drooling at the thought of a new RE that didn't look like any of the other REs.

The Himalayan was their first new motorcycle from the ground up. It had an all new engine; and an all new design with a purpose built chassis and a whole host of other features that were conceptualized to fit a specific need.

It was (and still is) a brilliant exercise in product development. More importantly, the Himalayan was an effort that was least expected from RE because all we had seen from RE was them playing to their base of retro-styled motorcycles.

And how they let down their first real effort, and a splendid one in many ways, at developing a new motorcycle is a textbook example of how great product ideas can be let down by shoddy execution. The first batches of the motorcycle were plagued by serious problems that exposed a highly immature development process:

https://www.motorbeam.com/royal-enfi...-way-too-many/

https://www.rushlane.com/royal-enfie...-12237993.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnGev7yvF7o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwk3L23lIY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izo4O4z7-hE

To make matters worse, the company initially dug in its heels and stonewalled customers who had placed their faith in this product.

After what felt like an eternity, RE finally took the bike off the market citing BS 4 emission norms as the reason. To their credit, they reworked the bike and the new Himalayan is reportedly sorted; and I have heard customers saying decent things about the re-engineered bike. But, I suspect that the damage is already done. I certainly don't see the new Himalayan setting the sales charts on fire; and I suspect that has everything to do with the first impressions that were created with this bike.

Now RE is at the cusp of the launch of their 650 twins. I hope that they have digested the learnings from the Himalayan's launch well. If they haven't, their marketing efforts will again come back to bite them.

[motorworks]

Originally Posted by dhanushmenon

If Tata blessed themselves with the sketch of Mahindra Maximo, Mahindra did themselves a favour by advertising Maruti in their Club Mahindra ad.

Attachment 1805889

How is this a blunder? Club Mahindra is an independent entity and has nothing to do with automobiles! They are as independent as say Tech Mahindra!

So they must have outsourced their advertising to another company and those folks must have shot an ad with the Gypsy, focusing more on the aesthetics and the whole communication of holidaying.
They could have used a Bolero camper, may be. But did this create an adverse impact for Mahindra automotive or club Mahindra? Neither!

Lets define blunders as incidents that auto manufacturers made from a strategic or product or even price point of view rather than such inconsequential pieces.

[ajmat]

The other aspect is that the Gypsy is better suited to this kind of work as opposed to the Mahindra vehicles which the animals can hear and smell 5 miles away!

[amtak]

Originally Posted by ajmat

The other aspect is that the Gypsy is better suited to this kind of work as opposed to the Mahindra vehicles which the animals can hear and smell 5 miles away!

Besides the above picture is from a safari at Jim Corbett (UK number), where only gypsies are allowed inside. We are going off topic, but this was needed to be confirmed.

[ajmat]

Am surprised that this got left out

The SAN Storm




Lamborghini moved from tractors to exotic cars
BMW moved from Bubble cars to sporty saloons
Tata moved from trucks to cars

In the above cases, they had access to an eco-system (Lamborghini), deep pockets to learn from mistakes (Tata), rich godfathers to back them (Quandt + BMW)

SAN were a small locomotive company with none of the above. Result a hotch potch of Renault and plastic in a market where fuel consumption and not the sense of occasion was preferred.There was a sense of occasion during all seasons

Monsoons - one could sing raindrops keep falling on my head
Summer could be spent swimming in melted plastic

And you could have fun picking up the pieces after that with its shoddy build!

The old report from Dippy is here (Test Driven : San Storm). Thank god, we had not started our detailed reviews then, this would have become powder!

[jpcoolguy]

Originally Posted by payeng

2. I would rather say that the manner if which the "Discover" brand was (mis)handled is a classic case study of a Fiasco.

• Loosing the first mover advantage - Come to think of it the Discover was launched as a 125 cc much before the (now 125 cc leaders) the Honda Shine and the Hero Glamour.

Now, hear it from the horse mouth itself - Rajiv Bajaj calling launching of Discover 100 cc as one of their biggest blunders.

Source: https://www.livemint.com/Companies/V...ajeev-Baj.html

He noted that the Discover was a differentiating product when it was launched in 125-cc format, “offering mileage with a little fun,” which was evident from the rising volumes.
.
.
.
“Greed came in. Marketing people said if the 125-cc Discover sells so much then how many would a 100-cc Discover sell? We went ahead and made the 100-cc Discover. We lost our position and five years later we lost our performance too...”

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by joe_antony

S-Cross, no, I am not talking about the discontinuing of 1.6D engine. I am talking about they sticking to only diesel option. This to me a big blunder. This is a premium crossover, it had the finesse and build quality was completely un-maruti (it was good) but there is no petrol engine on offer. The car had 1.4 turbo charged petrol engine for the rest of the world but not for India. It would have sold in much better numbers if there was a petrol engine with a good AT box.

This I agree with.
When silly MSIL brought in the S Cross, they should have offered options like the 1.6 with AllGrip and 1.6 without AllGrip. And AT. (Proper CVT not AMT)
And most certainly they should have had the 1.4 Petrol again with AllGrip and without. And AT. (Proper CVT not AMT)

But then, MSIL lives to serve the mass market Kitna Deti Hai type of consumer and simply doesn’t care about the few enthusiasts around.

This is one reason I think they are making another blunder by ignoring the potential the new 2018 Jimny has, with the enthusiastic crowd!

[puchoo]

The fabia in my opinion - and specifically the 1.6 Petrol. A very competent car for the most part and truly energetic with the 1.6 under the hood. Never really managed to take off thanks to :-

Market was Anti-petrol at that point and diesels were in Demand. To bring a 1.6 into the country was always going to be a tough sell.

Skoda sales and service - Skoda was having trouble just getting their dealers into line and behave themselves . They should have concentrated on that more rather than introducing new models which would have been on the backfoot from day 1 thanks to the apprehensions of the market towards the brand.

Marketing - the 1.6 was never really marketed even after being launched. To the point that a lot of the salespersons themselves did not know that such a variant existed.